How Can I Automate my Marketing?

Marketing automation is best done through the use of software. Marketing automation methods and tactics help to streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows, that helps convert prospects to customers and turn customers into delighted and returning customers. This in turn can help to increase operational efficiency and grow revenue.

Some of these practices are possible at small volumes without software, but technology becomes essential with any scale and with the increasing number of channels that are required to manage in order to market your business effectively.

There are many different methods of Marketing Automation and one common mistake that businesses make is signing up for all different types of software that may do one or two aspects of marketing automation.

The problem with this method is that all of your methods and strategy is not inter-connected which could lead to an inefficient marketing strategy for your business. You may end up doing twice as much work when it’s not needed.

If you are using multiple different marketing automation software, the data you receive is not connected and is not proper since the data is being measured on different levels and in different ways.

The beauty about online marketing is the ability for your actions to be tracked resulting in real data. Without this data, you may end up doing the same type of marketing, expecting different results each time.

The best way to avoid this is by finding a software that can do everything your business needs from, lead management, email marketing, lead generation, landing pages, workflows and more.

Though there are many pieces that must be put in place to establish a successful marketing automation strategy, like any other campaign, you will want to start with a well-defined strategy, where you determine your target audiences, establish goal values, and create convincing content assets and offers. But in this blog post, let us focus on the more technical benefits of marketing automation and what you can implement to make your marketing easier.

Here are some marketing automation methods that you can implement for your business.

Staying top of mind with cold prospects.

You worked so hard to get that lead in and reach out to them, most likely on more than one occasion. So it would be a shame to just let that lead go without a fight. And if you had a way to automate that fight, would you do it?

With Marketing Automation, you can set automatic follow-ups to be sent out to these cold prospects based on factors such as their interest level, behaviour or time. So for example, if a prospect was really interested in a product that you had to offer but the timing was off because they didn’t have the budget for it at that time, wouldn’t it be worth it to keep your business top of mind with that prospect, just in case that time came when that prospect had the budget and was still interested in the product you had to offer?

You would be able to add that prospect to a group that will receive timed emails about that specific product or similar products just to keep enticing that prospect to buy it. In fact, maybe this will motivate them to work harder or save more so they can afford to buy it from you.

Moving current leads along the sales pipeline.

Managing multiple leads at once can get a little hectic – especially if you are the one having to handle all the leads by yourself. There are automations that you can put in place in order to help with moving that lead farther down the sales pipeline instead of manually having to do it for every single lead that comes in.  

Businesses have all different types of sales pipelines and cycles that they go through. Some pipelines could include 3, 5, or even 10 different stages with multiple activities that take place within each stage. If you had a way to automatically move that lead along the pipeline without having to manually remember which stage they are in or what activity you have to do next for them – wouldn’t that make your life and your sales process a whole lot easier?

Well believe it or not, there are software that exists with a built-in sales process feature that is customizable and has built in automations.  TieiT for example, has this feature built in that is helping our users  to help streamline their day and sales process.

Staying engaged with past customers.

Converting a lead to a customer is a great feeling and amazing accomplishment for you and your business. A past customer should be considered just as valuable if not more valuable than a lead. You took a lot of time to convert that lead into a customer, so don’t let all that effort go to waste.

Use marketing automation to consistently stay in touch and engaged with past customers to see if you can bring any more value to them.

By you adding past customers to a drip marketing campaign or into a group that will receive consistent emails about your business, new products/services, achievements, deals/coupons, you are keeping your business top of mind and making your customer feel special so if they are in need of your products/services again in the future, they will remember you. Plus, they may not be shy in referring their friends and family to you too.

Show your customers that you care.

Using marketing automation, you can also create workflows to send out automated, yet personal emails to everyone on your CRM on their birthdays (or at least to whoever you have collected this information from in your CRM). The key component though is to have your marketing automation and CRM connected in some way to achieve this (for more information on why its best to have your marketing automation and CRM connected, click here.

By sending out a simple birthday email to your customers or leads, this shows an extra initiative by your business and shows that you care.

You can also create other types of workflows like this based on purchase dates. So you can send an automated follow up after a certain amount of time to a customer based on the date of their purchase.

These types of automations helps take your customer service to a whole new level without having to hire new staff to remember to send these types of emails out.

There are many different types of automations that your business can put in place to help your business on many levels. Marketing automation can help streamline operations, increase customer engagement  and improve customer service. If you are considering marketing automation, make sure you research the different software available to you. For tips on selecting the right marketing automation software for your business, click here.